WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM (1770-1850).—­Poet, s. of John W., attorney and agent to the 1st Lord Lonsdale, was b. at Cockermouth.  His boyhood was full of adventure among the hills, and he says of himself that he showed “a stiff, moody, and violent temper.”  He lost his mother when he was 8, and his f. in 1783 when he was 13.  The latter, prematurely cut off, left little for the support of his family of four sons and a dau., Dorothy (afterwards the worthy companion of her illustrious brother), except a claim for L5000 against Lord Lonsdale, which his lordship contested, and which was not settled until his death.  With the help, however, of uncles, the family were well ed. and started in life.  William received his earlier education at Penrith and Hawkshead in Lancashire; and in 1787 went to St. John’s Coll., Camb., where he graduated B.A. in 1791.  In the preceding year, 1790, he had taken a walking tour on the Continent, visiting France in the first flush of the Revolution with which, at that stage, he was, like many of the best younger minds of the time, in enthusiastic sympathy.  So much was this the case that he nearly involved himself with the Girondists to an extent which might have cost him his life.  His funds, however, gave out, and he returned to England shortly before his friends fell under the guillotine.  His uncles were desirous that he should enter the Church, but to this he was unconquerably averse; and indeed his marked indisposition to adopt any regular employment led to their taking not unnatural offence.  In 1793 his first publication—­Descriptive Sketches of a Pedestrian Tour in the Alps, and The Evening Walk—­appeared, but attracted little attention.  The beginning of his friendship with Coleridge in 1795 tended to confirm him in his resolution to devote himself to poetry; and a legacy of L900 from a friend put it in his power to do so by making him for a time independent of other employment.  He settled with his sister at Racedown, Dorsetshire, and shortly afterwards removed to Alfoxden, in the Quantock Hills, to be near Coleridge, who was then living at Nether Stowey in the same neighbourhood.  One result of the intimacy thus established was the planning of a joint work, Lyrical Ballads, to which Coleridge contributed The Ancient Mariner, and W., among other pieces, Tintern Abbey.  The first ed. of the work appeared in 1798.  With the profits of this he went, accompanied by his sister and Coleridge, to Germany, where he lived chiefly at Goslar, and where he began the Prelude, a poem descriptive of the development of his own mind.  After over a year’s absence W. returned and settled with Dorothy at Grasmere.  In 1800 the second ed. of Lyrical Ballads, containing W.’s contributions alone, with several additions, appeared.  In the same year Lord Lonsdale d., and his successor settled the claims already referred to with interest, and the share of the brother and sister